West Midlands Ambulance Service has seen a number of radical changes following the introduction of a new paramedic grade.

The emergence of the new First Contact Practitioner has already seen a reduction in waiting times for patient treatment.

Wolverhampton paramedic Dave Ashford, aged 34, joined the service in 1988 as one of the first ambulance cadets.

He has recently completed the FCP two-week intensive training course in patient assessment and has already seen the benefits of the new role.

Mr Ashford said: "FCPs provide the first stage of emergency care. It enables you to go out and assess a patient with a reporting mechanism in place. They can be referred back to their own GP.

"I went out to see a gentleman who was complaining of chest pain under exertion. I spent an hour with the man at home and he referred him to the heart and lungs centre in Wolverhampton for tests for angina.

"If the GP had to attend the patient, he would have been tied up and the patient would have had to stay for at least four hours in the hospital waiting to be admitted.

"It takes us an hour to see someone, saving ten hours of NHS time. The man would have been taken in to the A&E department where he would be looking at a ten-hour wait."

More than 150 West Midlands Ambulance Service FCPs will eventually be trained to treat patients, either at home or care centres in the region.

Currently there are six teams of practitioners, three in the Black Country and three in Birmingham. They work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Euan Connell, an ambulance operations manager, is responsible for establishing the new FCP programme in the West Midlands.

He said: "First Contact Practitioners will change the way patients are seen and treated in the community, particularly in cases of minor illness and injury."

Mr Ashford said anyone who calls in an emergency is asked a series of closed questions relating to their main complaint. They are then placed into one of three categories.

Category A is a serious or life-threatening condition, B is a serious condition that requires an ambulance response, and a patient who falls into category C is described as not serious.